A big part of US News' system involves a schools reputation as determined by their annual survey. Fordham, despite being in the top 15 for LSAT and having good job placement in NYC, always receives a reputation score lower than the 15-30 schools.

I think it has to do with not having as widespread a reputation as some of the higher ranked schools. Fordham places mostly in NYC, where as the rest of the 15-30 might place in more than one major city. For instance, a bunch of the mid-western state schools may place in say, Chicago AND Minneapolis, or BU in Boston AND NYC. Therefore, it's name is less well known outside of the city, and would have a lower repuation score.

Fordham is more about location than quality. They focus pretty exclusively on BigLaw in NYC. Fordham isn't even "regional" so much as "city-specific". It's tough for Fordham grads to move even within the northeast corridor... Boston, DC, etc.

They do what they do: place ambitious, moderately talented gunners in big firms with big salaries and even bigger annual hour expectations. Everything else is incidental at Fordham.

I don't know much about Fordham, but it seems like it still has a regional reputation. While it scores high, it won't rank higher until it gets more of a national reputation. I think that there are a lot of schools like that-UC Davis, BYU, Minnesota....

I don't know much about Fordham, but it seems like it still has a regional reputation. While it scores high, it won't rank higher until it gets more of a national reputation. I think that there are a lot of schools like that-UC Davis, BYU, Minnesota....

it's all about the rep scores which are 40% of the usnews system, fordham has great numbers but national rep has always lagged behind schools like nd, w&l, and emory. really does not make a difference if one wants to be in nyc as the vast majority of fordham gards do, but it definitely hurts them in a national ranking system.

Well, according to the new ranking Fordham made a huge leap from 32- 25 that is a 7 point difference...With time it will get the recongnition it deserves

From what I understand, the quality of the Fordham faculty is a lot lower than most of the 15-30 schools and ultimately that's not going to change unless the school hires some bigger names or the current faculty gets more recognition.